Enforcement Rules of the Patent Act Article 27

The so-called “linked as to form a single general inventive concept” in Paragraph 2, Article 33 of the Act shall mean that two or more inventions are technically related to one another.The inventions that are technically related to one another referred to in the preceding paragraph shall contain one or more same or corresponding special technical features.The so-called “special technical features” referred to in the preceding paragraph shall mean the technical features which define a contribution which each of the claimed inventions, considered as a whole, makes over the prior art.The determination of whether two or more inventions are technically related to one another shall be made without regard to whether the inventions are claimed in separate claims or as alternatives within a single claim.